


If only I could wake you up

by MABlake



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Clarke is trapped in her mind, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Clarke, POV Bellamy Blake, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Protective Bellamy, Season/Series 06 Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-07 00:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18862171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MABlake/pseuds/MABlake
Summary: He ached to touch her when Abby suggested, “Take her hand.”It was on instinct, that his fingers were already halfway there before he could process her words. One of the muscles in her arm reacted to the contact of his skin against hers. He stopped talking, he almost stopped breathing, and then he kneeled so that her face was at the same level as his. “Princess?”For a second there was nothing, and he thought that maybe he’d imagined it, but then he saw movement. It was barely there, but he saw it, and he choked out a sob, finally letting the tears fall down his cheeks. He let his forehead fall against the mattress, where their hands were still joined, trying to calm the wild beating of his heart.___Or: Clarke is trapped in her mind, and there's only one person who can save her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Hold me while you wait” by Lewis Capaldi. If you want to listen to something while you read, I made a playlist for this fic: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3l98Kghoe3xUHh7GlR3Yh6
> 
> I’ve been working on this for the last few weeks and I just finished it days ago. After the last episode, I can’t say I’m surprised they hadn’t let go of the flame’s storyline yet, but I wanted to use it in favor of Bellarke. I have more ideas right now, but I’m not sure if I’m going to follow through with them because I’m already busy, so. I don't know.
> 
> The moment the rumor about Clarke’s father appearing started, my brain came up with reasons and I decided to take this one and make it a fic. It’s weird, because he is not here for more than a few words. Just so you know, this has .0000001% probabilities of happening and I know it, but I couldn’t get rid of the idea once it came, so here you go. I hope you like it! 
> 
> Like I said, this has weeks in the making, so please ignore the events that happened in the last episodes. Thanks to @BellarkeMood on twitter for helping me as a beta-reader, you're the best!

Every single part of him ached. His hands were braced against the corner of the table, and his knuckles were white from clinging to it. His heart was ripped open.

Raven and Abby had just explained what had happened to Clarke, but all the words were mixed in his brain. He knew they made sense, he knew he had to accept them, he just... didn’t want to. When they arrived at the new planet, he thought that maybe Monty was right and it would be the perfect time to start living. When the leaders seemed welcoming, he thought that maybe they could have happiness and a home that wouldn’t be destroyed.

What a fool.

The only family he had was broken to pieces, the person he called his home was asleep on a table in front of him, and there was a chance she wouldn’t wake up ever again.

He wanted to cry, to destroy the room and throw every useless thing that could be broken around him. He wanted to beg her to come back to him, because _what would he do without her?_ but someone had already told him that any plea would fall to deaf ears.

It wasn’t that she was really gone. Her body was still there; she was still breathing on her own, and she wasn’t any paler than usual, but... Fuck, that didn’t make it any better.

When they arrived, they soon discovered the people there had something similar to The Flame, and the people who believed in nightblood had been thrilled to discover that Clarke had been transformed into one.

They had thought these people would be different, that they would break the cycle, and having been so trusting had been his worst mistake. He could’ve never imagined that they wanted her to lead them, that they would put that thing in her head.

He should’ve insisted on accompanying her home that day, not letting her go alone. He should’ve done a lot of things differently, but now that the damage was done, he couldn’t do anything. No one could.

“You need to rest,” a familiar voice said from the door. Before he would’ve cared, he would’ve listened.

He didn’t want to do any of these things anymore.

“I’ll sleep when we find a way to wake her up,” he snapped.

“I know we broke up, Bellamy,” Echo replied to him in the same dry tone she had been using all her life. “That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. Do you think Clarke would want you to stay like this for her?”

“Don’t say her name,” he hissed, looking at her for the first time. “What would you know about what she wanted, anyway? Every time you were in the same room as her, you never talked to her. Or you were trying to choke her.”

It wasn’t fair of him to talk about their issues at the moment, but he couldn’t care less. Echo hadn’t talked to him since they broke up, and if she wanted to be in the same room as him, he was itching for a fight. He wanted to do something. _Anything_.

She sighed. “Look, I’m not here to fight. Go to sleep. Abby said Russell is going to help, but they are not going to be here until tomorrow. They need you awake, and ready to deal with... this.”

“Thanks for telling me,” he said, shortly, nodding to the door. “Now, if you don’t have anything else to say— you can go.”

Echo pursed her lips, clenching her jaw before nodding and doing as he asked, almost colliding with Madi when she stormed into the room. With her presence there, the med bay was a little more colorful. The walls were gray, and all the cots were pale blue or white, but Madi provided something akin to home. Clarke had raised her, so the kid had a little piece of her wherever she went.

“Sorry,” the girl said. At least at that, Echo nodded at her before leaving. When the kid was at his side, she exhaled a shaky breath, touching Clarke’s arm with her fingers, jaw trembling when she didn’t react at all. Madi looked up at him, and his heart ached even more seeing the tears in her eyes. “Is it true? Did our guests do this? She can’t wake up?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat and pulled her to his side as a response. Because it was the truth, even if he didn’t want to believe it. When they were given the land where they would be living, a few citizens had decided to go with them to help them settle, but now it all seemed like a trap. He had already ordered for them to be held in an improvised cell and they were being watched, but there was nothing else he could do at the moment.

It was all his damn fault, because now, thanks to their blind trust in the new strangers, Clarke’s life was in danger.

Madi’s little fingers clung to his shirt, and they stayed like that until she decided to talk again.

“Raven was telling them something before I left,” she revealed. “Something about ‘a link to shared consciousness’. What is that?”

There was uncertainty in her voice, and he knew that she was aching for Clarke just as much as him.

“Yeah,” he replied, his voice rough. “they told me it would be a last resort. If nothing else works, we’re going to have to try that.”

He wondered if she noticed he’d avoided the question, but if she did, Madi apparently trusted his judgement at the moment.

“Is it so bad?”

“I don’t know, Madi,” he confessed with a sigh, running a hand over his face. “Abby didn’t want to listen when Raven suggested it, and... I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to go back to my room,” she whispered. “Can I stay here with you?”

Everyone else had asked if he was going to go back to his room, and he was glad to have Madi at his side, knowing what he was going to do without even asking.

“Yeah,” he hugged her. “You can.”

 

* * *

 

 

Saying that Abby didn’t want to talk to Raven after the suggestion was an understatement, of course, but he didn’t want to scare Madi more than she already was.

When the mechanic suggested the use of the method Madi talked about, Abby didn’t want to hear it.

“There has to be something else,” she insisted.

“Okay, no, stop,” Murphy said. “If you say we have a chance to wake her up with this, why can’t we try? What is so dangerous about this? Give us a damn reason, Abby.”

The doctor pursed her lips and rubbed her temples. “The first reason is that you’ll be invading her privacy. The second? We don’t know how much we can trust these people, and this is their technology. We don’t know what’ll happen to her brain if we try. We know nothing about this AI or what it does.” She glanced at Bellamy before returning her gaze to Murphy. “You two were there when we destroyed A.L.I.E. We can’t even understand how painful that was for Clarke, but we do know that her body started rejecting the flame.” She gestured to the part in the room where her daughter was. “It was different then because right now we don’t know why she’s not compatible with this thing, and therefore— we can’t fix this. Her body is already trying to get rid of this thing, and her brain is fighting so hard that she’s trapped inside her mind. We don’t know how much time it will take for her body to shut down completely.”

“Which means?” Shaw prompted.

“She could die,” Jackson said.

Those words made his world seem clouded and cold. He couldn’t believe this was happening.

“We should’ve kept at least one of the cryo chambers,” Abby muttered, sitting on a chair beside the table.

“It doesn’t matter now. We can’t do anything to change that.”

Everyone in the room jumped a little when Bellamy sent one of the metal chairs flying to the closest wall. Raven sighed and approached him slowly.

“Hey,” she said, sternly. “This is not going to help her, okay? We all need to focus.”

Bellamy clenched his jaw, closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing. Then, he turned to Abby. “What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing,” was her answer. “I’ve already talked to Russell, and—”

“Wait.” Echo narrowed her eyes at the woman. “We just got here. Who gave you the right to do that? I thought Bellamy had done it.”

Abby glared at her. “I didn’t think I needed permission to save my daughter’s life.”

“You don’t need it,” Bellamy said. “It was a good call, Abby.”

“Bellamy,” Echo took a step towards him, but thought better of it and stayed where she was. “They need to know who is in charge. We can’t have them thinking we are not a good team. You should’ve made that call, not her.”

“Echo,” Raven hissed. “Don’t start now. This is not the time, seriously.”

“You know I am right. If we are not careful, they are going to take away what we’ve been building. We can’t allow ourselves to be—”

“What were you going to say? Weak?” Murphy huffed. “You sound just like Octavia. It’s Clarke’s life, every minute we can win is needed.”

“When will they get here?” Bellamy asked, looking at Abby.

“They need to prepare the equipment, but they said they’ll get here as soon as they can— which is in a few hours, just before dawn.”

“Clarke is going to be okay until then, right?”

Abby and Jackson shared a glance that made a wave of fear lunge at him. The man decided to answer, “We’re not sure about that.” He eyed Bellamy warily, looking for signs of distress. “We don’t know how this AI works, and Clarke isn’t even stable right now.”

Suddenly, Bellamy had an idea. He looked at Raven. “You used something to keep A.L.I.E out of your head. Can’t you do something like that again?”

She was already shaking her head, but Abby was the one to answer. “We don’t want to risk it. It didn’t go well last time we tried, and this could be more difficult. We never tried with the flame, and this is more advanced than that. We think the host has to get rid of it. This thing is attached to certain parts of her brain and I can’t try to remove it because of that.”

“What do you mean ‘attached to her brain’?” Bellamy asked, even more worried now that he understood what was happening. “How dangerous is that?”

Abby pursed her lips. “We don’t know yet. Her brain activity has been irregular since we brought her here.”

“We’re hoping we’ll know more when Russell arrives,” Jackson added.

It didn’t help keep the fear at bay.

“Madi needs to know,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Clarke is everything to her.”

He didn’t state the obvious; she was everything to him, too.

 

* * *

 

 

When Abby returned, Madi was asleep on a couch Murphy and Miller brought to the infirmary, while he was still a mess in an uncomfortable chair, by Clarke’s side, between them.

“Any changes?” she asked, but she already knew the answer.

He sighed, tired. “None.”

Just then, there was a small flutter on her eyelids. Abby clung to the nearest thing, which was Bellamy’s arm. He snapped to attention at the touch, growing tense at the shell-shocked expression on the doctor’s face. He didn’t dare to open his mouth while she was thinking, just stood there until she sighed shakily.

“Go to sleep, Abby,” he whispered, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll make sure to wake you up before they arrive.”

He knew he was a hypocrite, telling her to sleep when he didn’t want to move until Clarke woke up. But Abby didn’t answer. When he looked at her, her eyes were shining with unshed tears. His heart almost stopped at the sight.

“What is it?” he pleaded, with urgency. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head, “Nothing,” she replied, and then stood up. “Keep talking, Bellamy.”

“What? Why do you—?”

“Bellamy,” she said, forceful this time. He noticed something different in her eyes.

It was hope and was accompanied by stubborn determination.

He frowned but did as she asked, talking about the new building and the lessons he was planning to give the kids when everything calmed down, the stories he told Madi and Clarke late at night before they went to sleep.

He was so focused on holding onto the good times that he didn’t realize when Dr. Griffin got closer to him until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Bellamy,” she whispered, and when he opened his eyes, he saw her smiling despite the tears in her eyes. “Look at her while you talk.”

He did, and then he noticed the twitch in her brow and the crinkle at the corner of her lip.

He ached to touch her when Abby suggested, “Take her hand.”

It was on instinct, that his fingers were already halfway there before he could process her words. One of the muscles in her arm reacted to the contact of his skin against hers. He stopped talking, he almost stopped breathing, and then he kneeled so that her face was at the same level as his. “Princess?”

For a second there was nothing, and he thought that maybe he’d imagined it, but then he saw movement. It was barely there, but he saw it, and he choked out a sob, finally letting the tears fall down his cheeks. He let his forehead fall against the mattress, where their hands were still joined, trying to calm the wild beating of his heart.

“This is good, Bellamy,” Abby said, bringing him back to reality. “You center her. She reacts to your voice and your touch. We need to keep her that way. Can you talk to her as much as possible?”

He choked out a laugh. “If this helps? I’ll keep talking until Russell arrives.”

She smiled at him. A little sad, but a little brighter than before. Her lips were trembling. “She’s lucky to have you.”

Those were words from another world, and he wondered if Jaha had told her about that trip to the woods, but they hit him the same. He swallowed the lump in his throat to look at Clarke and he reached out to touch her cheek. “No. I’m the lucky one.”

 

* * *

 

 

He kept talking until his voice was hoarse and his lips were dry. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop if he was helping. Abby brought him a glass of water more than once during the night.

He had just started to explain his part of the story about Praimfaya.

“I was so scared that day,” he admitted, rubbing circles on the skin of her wrist. He smiled a little. “And I remember you being scared too, but your presence always calmed me.” He grew serious at that and took a shaky breath. “You knew something was going to happen to you, and I didn’t want to listen. You told me how proud of me you were, and I couldn’t tell you— I couldn’t tell you how important you were to me. Now we got our second chance, and I told you I care about you— but I didn’t tell you the whole truth, Clarke. You can’t hear me with all of your mind right now; Abby said some part of you is listening, but not all of you, so I’ll just have to wait, right? I’ll wait for you. I’m going to get you out of there somehow. I’ll figure it out. Madi needs you, and I do too. But, more than anything else, I need you to live, okay? I don’t care if you don’t feel the same when I tell you, just that you can live, that you can be happy. There’s no one else in the universe who deserves that more than you.”

He breathed deeply. “And then... the head and the heart, remember? We’ll keep leading for a while until you want to stop doing this. Or we’ll just leave it when you wake up. Whenever you’re ready.” He dropped a kiss in her hand, and he almost whispered, “ _Just wake up_.”

“She never forgot about that,” a voice said from somewhere behind him. He startled, and turned around to find Madi looking at him with sleepy eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t want to scare you, just— she talked about that day a lot.”

He felt like he had a noose around his neck. “We left her to die alone on a planet full of radiation. Of course, she couldn’t forget about it.”

Madi shook her head. “No, Bellamy.” She got closer to him, sitting in a chair beside him that was there for Abby. “She always said you were the bravest of them all for making that choice. She was proud of you for leaving.”

He choked back a sob. “Why?”

“Because it was hard, and she knew you didn’t want to do it.” She looked down to her hands in her lap. “And it’s not just that. It was the way she talked about you. Octavia was my favorite, but you were Clarke’s.”

Bellamy sounded strangled when he said, “She told you everything about us, huh?”

His tone was supposed to be teasing but instead sounded desperate.

“Clarke said she should’ve said something better than ‘hurry’. That you deserved more.”

He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, trying to calm down. He’d thought about that moment every day during the last six years. He should’ve told her how much he loved her, but he thought they’d have time, and then they got separated and he mourned her with every part of his soul.

“She deserved more, too.” Bellamy swallowed the lump in his throat and turned to see the girl, and the look on her face was enough to break him all over again. He opened his arms for her and whispered, “Come here.”

She went without saying anything, and he closed his eyes, trying to compose himself. He needed to be strong. For Clarke and her daughter.

“We’re going to help her, Madi. We’ll do everything we can.”

He wanted to promise her more, but he’d already broken a promise and he didn’t want to do it again. Madi just nodded against his shoulder and sat down again so they could keep talking to Clarke.

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Murphy hissed when the doctor from Sanctum finished explaining the situation. Echo elbowed him in the ribs, but he didn’t give a fuck.

“They are not,” Russell said. “This is the only option.”

_The only choice._

Bellamy was tired of those. He _hated_ them.

“Dr. Griffin already warned us about how dangerous this procedure is,” Bellamy said with his hands on his hips. “Wouldn’t it be too risky if we chose to do it this way?”

“It’s the best chance you have to save her.” Russell took a step towards him. “We’ve already put her in cryo, but you won’t keep her there forever, will you? I can promise to try and find a better solution, but that wouldn’t be happening any time soon. It could take months, years— decades, even. We can’t be sure.”

“This is our best chance, then?” Abby said, sounding both worried and resigned.

“It is.”

“If that’s true, who would be the most qualified person to help my daughter?”

“You told us she reacted to someone’s voice,” a young woman commented, making the rest of the team step aside so she could be noticed. When the rest saw her, her red hair made her stand out in the room. “This is not about science, it’s about someone who can get through the dream she’s trapped in, someone who can bring her back.”

Bellamy could feel the weight of everyone’s gazes on him when he shared a glance with Abby. They hadn’t told anyone else about Clarke’s reactions, but they thought maybe the information could help Russell’s team so they didn’t bother to hide it.

“Are there any chances he’ll get trapped with her?” Raven asked. “Clarke is smart, and her mind is strong. What if she drags him there?”

“That could happen, too.”

“If it does, can we take him out of there?”

“We wouldn’t be able to do so, Miss Reyes.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bellamy replied with certainty. “I’m going. Even if I have to die to bring her back, _I will_.”

No one could deny him this, because almost everyone in the room had witnessed how broken he was when he left Clarke behind. If he lost her for good, it would destroy him and there would be nothing strong enough to heal a wound that deep.

People can heal, there was no doubt about that, but everyone had a breaking point and they were all afraid to seeing Bellamy reach it.

“Yeah, yeah, we all know that. Stop being so dramatic,” Murphy said, trying to decrease the tension in the room. “We all know that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suggest that you listen to the playlist while reading this part. Hope you like it! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3l98Kghoe3xUHh7GlR3Yh6

He was a mess while the others prepared the room to be able to save Clarke.

They had asked him to take a shower, to calm his anxiety, but of course, it didn’t work. The only thing that would calm him down would be knowing Clarke was safe.

There were so many things that could go wrong.

Someone knocked on the door, and he knew it would be Jordan because everyone else was busy or wouldn’t bother knocking. And, sure enough, when he answered, Jordan was there.

“Hi.”

“Jordan,” Bellamy replied, allowing him to enter to the room. “Are they ready?”

“Not yet.”

Bellamy nodded because he’d expected as much. “What do you need, then?”

Jordan didn’t say anything for so long that he thought he’d forgotten what he came for, but then he blurted out, “You love her, right?”

The dark-haired man didn’t bother denying it. “Yes.”

Jordan blinked as if he didn’t expect him to give such a direct response. “Oh, well, I was— I wanted you to know how you felt, in case you were in denial. Honestly, there was more than one reason my parents wanted to wake you up first.” The confession wasn’t exactly unwelcome, but Bellamy didn’t know where the boy was going with it. “They wanted you to be happy, together. That’s why I never really liked Echo,” he admitted, and Bellamy snorted because, yeah, he’d noticed. “Those first two weeks I hated to see how much you were hurting because it was painful to watch, and when you ended things with Echo it was a relief. You and Clarke were miserable before that, and I grew up with all of you as my heroes, I knew what you were throwing away. Mom and Dad always told me that your love was part of who you are, that it was based on trust, support, and forgiveness.”

“That's a romantic way to put it.”

“I am a romantic at heart.” Jordan agreed, and then hugged him. “Please come back. Save her and come back.”

Bellamy nodded, and pulled away from him when there was another knock on the door.

It was the same woman who said he was the only chance they had to save Clarke, and Jordan must’ve seen how important the conversation was because he left immediately after a quick goodbye. Raven was behind the redhead and she closed the door.

“Hello, Mr. Blake.” The woman said, smiling politely. “My name is Hazel and you don’t have to worry. I know what I’m doing here, and I am optimistic despite the situation.”

“How? Her life is in danger. Maybe she won’t— what if she doesn’t wake up?”

“She will.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “How can you be so sure? Abby told me that no one has tried to do this before and the chance of success is very low.”

“I don’t know much about the commanders of the Earth, but in Sanctum, they’d always been lonely.” She tilted her head towards the door as if pointing to Clarke. “She’s lucky, and strong. Everyone who has gone through this has died within a day, even after years of preparation, but your voice delayed the process. You saved her life, and you gave her a chance to live.”

The lump in his throat was trying to choke him. Raven kept all her attention on him, and he wanted to assure her that he was fine, but he wasn't so sure. “What do you mean?”

“Those commanders? They didn’t want to love, so they didn’t. When it was time to take that chip, none of them had someone to take them out, because they weren’t connected to anyone.” She blinked, the intensity of her words fading away. “It’s a theory, honestly, but It's the only thing that makes Clarke different from the others. This is the only thing that makes sense, and it’ll probably save her life.”

“I get that, but— Why did she react to my voice? Why didn’t she react to the others?”

For the first time, she looked at him with something that wasn’t respect. It seemed like pity. “Oh, boy. They were right.”

He must’ve looked confused because Raven snorted. “We told her you were an idiot.”

He was about to retort when the woman continued. “Well, yeah, but this is another level of stupidity.” Then, Hazel realized what she’d said and hurried to apologize, but he just asked her to continue. There were more urgent matters at hand. She nodded and then started, trying to explain everything as best as she could.

“You need to be prepared before you go in there,” she began, sternly. “You need to be smart, and you must not get attached to whatever you see in there. If there’s something good and you like it, you’re going to lose your time there, and we need to be quick. For her, it’ll be different. Her worst nightmares will try to weaken her, and they will be the longest. You’ll see her memories, her nightmares and what she wants for the future or what could’ve been. If you’re in the illusion, maybe you’ll be there as you and you’ll be able to talk to her, or maybe you’ll be seeing everything as if you were a ghost.”

“How do you know I am going to be there?”

Hazel rolled her eyes. “You’re just going to try to deny it if I tell you, and we don’t have time for that, so... Just trust me, I know. And when you see her best dreams, you’ll get it, too.”

He accepted that answer. “How do I wake her up?”

Hazel shared a glance with Raven, impressed. “Well, he is a little smart.” Then she turned to him again. “Look, it’s—your voice is enough to keep her alive, and it was stopping the effect the chip was having in her brain, but this is going to be harder. You’ll know it’s not real when you get there, but you need to convince her of that too. You need to bring her back before it’s too late.”

“Or we die.”

“Or you die,” she agreed.

“How will I know when we are running out of time?”

“If you are running out of time, that’ll mean you are losing the connection, so... probably your vision would be blurred, and her voice muffled. If you are in the darkness... _If_ all you can see is black, you're going to be trapped there, and there won’t be an exit. If you both die, you won’t wake up, and you’ll stop dreaming.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Mr. Blake...” the woman hesitated a little, but then she continued. “I need you to understand the risks you’re going to face the moment you enter the link. If you go in there, you can get her back or you’re going to die with her. There’s no in-between. No second chances.”

“I understand, Hazel. And I’ve already decided.”

“Bellamy...” When Raven said his name, it sounded pained. She knew she wouldn’t be able to change his mind. His decision was made.

“We are not going to let her die,” he told them both. His voice broke a little at the end, because the possibility of losing her again was unbearable. He looked at Raven, “If we don’t return... take care of Madi for us. And make sure to keep the promise we made to Harper and Monty.”

There were tears in Raven’s eyes when she said, “We all will.”

 

* * *

 

 

When they entered the room with the cryo pod Clarke was in, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Madi was at his side on the cot, squeezing his hand like her life depended on it. Her eyes had her usual strength and stubbornness, but her chin trembled with fear.

Abby connected him to a machine that would monitor his vital signs after asking him to lie down, and he hated not being able to help Clarke in that moment, but he knew he couldn't waste any time. If he helped to connect her, they’d be losing time they didn’t have.

Hazel approached him with something similar to a hat, but that had several patches of different colors with wires. “This is our most advanced tech,” she said, handing it to him. “We use it to, um—” She cleared her throat, and he thought she was uncomfortable with all the attention in the room on her, but when the next words stumbled out of her mouth, he knew the reason. “Usually, it’s used in our marriage ceremonies.” His cheeks reddened, and he could now understand why Abby wasn’t akin to the idea in the first place, but didn’t say anything when the woman got closer to him. “It also works to treat Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, but, yeah. That’s the idea. Shared consciousness it's hard to achieve when you're out of sync, but everyone in this room has told me that wouldn't be a problem. You'll enter her dreams, and you need to get her out. Technical issues shouldn’t matter at this time.”

“It’ll hurt a little,” Abby added, with a frown. “It has integrated electrodes that’ll connect you to her, and other technology that I can’t recognize.”

He grunted and grimaced when he felt something sting in his head.

Hazel sighed. “Remember, you’ll need to be fast.”

He nodded, and then the world went black.

 

* * *

 

 

He woke up because he felt something laying on his chest, and the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes were bright lights and a blue-gray ceiling.

He identified what was on his chest —or, more accurately, _who_ —, when a childish voice said, “Daddy!” and he noticed the little boy smiling down at him. He had blue eyes, curly dark hair and a toothy grin. “Mommy says you need to wake up now.” He scrunched his nose, and Bellamy’s heart ached when he saw how similar he looked to Octavia when she was little.

Bellamy couldn’t even answer before the kid ran out of the room.

He sat there, dumbfounded, until he remembered what he had to do. _Clarke needed him_.

He got up and put on a shirt before exiting the bedroom to follow the sounds of the boy.

What he found there took his breath away. Clarke was in front of the stove, cooking and talking with the kid. There was an easiness about her that he’d only seen when she was with Madi, and the words out of her mouth were soft and full of patience. She was focused on the task at hand, and she didn’t notice him until she had finished with breakfast, smiling and brightening instantly.

“Hey,” she said, before walking up to him and giving him a brief, gentle kiss that left his mind spinning. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” he managed to choke out, his voice hoarse with sleep, not knowing what else to say.

“Sorry. I told our little boy not to wake you up because you spent all of yesterday with Murphy, but you know how he is.”

He pouted. “I wanted breakfast with daddy.”

Clarke smiled down at the kid before ruffling his hair. It seemed so normal, but it was so surreal at the same time, and Bellamy wished he could stay there forever, enjoying a life like that with Clarke. He understood the risk of that thought, remembering what Hazel had told him about not wasting time.

“Yeah, yeah,” her voice brought him back. She was looking at him. “My dad will be here soon. Madi already left with your sister, and we both know she won’t be back until tomorrow, so we have all day to ourselves.”

While he sat and ate, he wondered what the dream meant. Was he really seeing what Clarke wanted the most? A family, a kid... With him?

Was that what he was seeing? The life Clarke wished with all her heart? Maybe his feelings weren’t as one-sided as he thought, but he needed them both to survive this to figure that out.

His inner musings were interrupted when there was a knock in the door. Clarke leaned toward him, kissed his cheek and told him. “I’ll go answer the door. Eat with the kid.”

Bellamy smiled at her and waited patiently to have a moment alone with her. He didn’t know how these things worked, but he didn’t want to find out what would happen if he talked to her when someone else was with them.

When Clarke returned, a man was with her, smiling warmly at them, and he could see how much Clarke loved him with the ease of her smile.

“Hey there, kiddo,” Jake Griffin said, laughing a little at the boy’s antics when he stood up and ran to him. He balanced him on his hip. “You’re bigger than last time, right? And taller!”

The boy nodded seriously. “Daddy says that I’m going to be as tall as him!”

Clarke’s dad hummed. “I bet you are. Are you going to teach me how to play football?”

“Mommy is better than me, but I can teach you. Just a little.”

The man appeared to be thinking it over and then winked at him. “Deal. Go get your stuff.”

The boy nodded before Jake let him down and he went to his room.

When Clarke stepped closer to him the moment he stood up from his seat, and slid her hand in his, he thought about finding a way to get her alone just so they could talk. Before he could, the place around him started fading.

He breathed heavily before letting go. If he could have a future with her, he wanted it, but he wasn’t going to settle for a dream that couldn’t last forever.

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing he felt was the change in the environment. Before he was in a closed space, a warm home, and the next moment he was in a place where the wind blew softly and the cool of the night moved his curls.

Then, he realized he was talking. “I thought you hated that plan. That I would get myself killed.”

Clarke was in front of him. Her hair longer than it was before going to save her from her mind, her face closed off. He knew where he was, but knew nothing about the circumstances; was it a memory or something else?

“I was being weak. It’s worth the risk.”

He knew now that it was the only way she could keep her feelings in check. He remembered how painful it was for him to hear those words, but this time, when she said it, he just wanted to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay when they exited the dream.

It didn’t matter what he wanted to do, he felt rooted in place and that was how he knew it was a memory. He moved, anyway, and he followed her, but it wasn’t _him_ , it wasn’t his body, just— it was like he was the air that moved around.

He wanted to give her a message. Convince her that it wasn’t real, that she needed to be strong and fight back against the chip in her head, but every thought that crossed his mind was carried away by the wind.

She stopped in front of some trees, and he could see her trembling when they saw Finn appear out of nowhere. He couldn’t understand what was going on. What was Finn doing there? He was supposed to be dead by the time that conversation happened. Was all of this a nightmare? Everything else made it appear as a memory until then.

“Love is weakness,” he heard Clarke say, and then the boy in front of her disappeared like a ghost. She crumbled to the ground and tears started falling from her cheeks.

“Please, don’t let me lose him,” she whispered to the night. _“I can’t.”_

His heart broke for her, and then an unwanted thought flashed through his mind.

_Since before Mount Weather?_

 

* * *

 

 

The next time, he heard her voice before he could open his eyes. “Please, don’t!” she shouted, her voice broken. “I’ll do anything, I’ll stop fighting. Just please don’t kill him!”

When he found Roan looking down at him, it took him seconds to know where he was. Trying to save her after she left him at Camp Jaha’s gate. The grounder’s sword was against his throat, but instead of stabbing his leg, he quickly slit Bellamy’s throat. He didn’t know what was worse; the gurgling noise that followed or Clarke’s scream.

When he blinked, he didn’t disappear from the dream. _It didn’t end there_. He was like the wind, but he felt different somehow, more present. He could see her clearer at that perspective, and the sight broke his heart. Her eyes were wide, full of pain, and glued to his body. Roan had approached her to cover her mouth with his hand to keep her from screaming.

“Stop this, Wanheda,” he hissed. “I told you I didn’t want to kill anyone else.”

“You did, anyway,” she said when he took his hand away. Then, she spat on his face; her cheeks were full of tears, but the expression in her face was murderous. The man rolled his eyes and forced her to stand up, putting a gag in her mouth, taking her out of the cave. When she started fighting him, he hit her on the head.

When they were further away, he told her, “I don’t care who he was, but you should stop caring if you really want to survive in this world.”

Bellamy wanted to scream, to tell her that she was in a dream, that he was alive, but he couldn’t talk at the moment. The expression on her face— fuck, he had been there when the grounders forced Clarke to kill Finn, and he could see her withdrawing from him, closing in on herself and trying to keep all her feelings to herself, but he could see in her eyes all the anger and the sorrow. But what he was seeing was different. All the pain wanted to swallow her whole, and her eyes were drowning in regret and sadness.

She looked like he felt when he had to leave her to die on a burning planet, and all he wanted to do was take the pain away.

When they were closer to Polis, Roan stopped to give her some water, but she refused to take it. “Drink, Wanheda,” he ordered, clearly pissed. “I don’t want to carry your dehydrated body to Lexa. She’ll probably think that I killed you and then both of us will be dead in an instant.”

“Just kill me already,” she whispered, tired, defeated. Bellamy couldn’t believe she was Clarke, his Clarke. “Isn’t that what your people believe? That if you kill someone, you’ll take their power?”

“I already told you, I don’t want to kill you.”

She wasn’t looking at him when she said, “You already did.”

He wanted to tell her that he was alive, that she shouldn’t worry, but the words didn’t reach her.

When they entered the throne room, they found Lexa and he thought, ‘Maybe this will be my nightmare, too. Clarke lost me, and she’ll turn to her while I’m dead, and I’ll have to watch it all.

But she spat on her, too. She didn’t respond to anything the Commander asked, and then, a few days after, she almost killed Lexa.

Then, Clarke told her she’d do anything if she could guarantee Arkadia peace. When they gave her a room, all she did was stare at the wall, and at night she cried herself to sleep. He always tried to take her hand, to talk to her, but she didn’t seem to hear him, even if she froze in place when he tried. Every second she suffered, he ached too. He wanted nothing more but to get the hell out of that dream, but there was nothing he could do to reach her. He wondered how much time they had been in there... if the time was running out.

When they were about to sign the terms for the treaty, she asked to talk to her mother and Kane before they left.

“Clarke,” her mother breathed out when they closed the doors after she entered the room with Kane behind her. She was hugging her tightly, but the blonde wasn’t even paying attention to her, keeping her arms at her sides. All the weight of her gaze was on Kane.

“Where is he?” she asked.

His eyes fell to the floor, and she knew they understood whom she was referring to.

“Did you find his body?”

At that, her mother took a step backward while Kane looked sharply at her, “What?”

“I want to say goodbye,” she explained. “Did you find him?”

Abby understood immediately and covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh my God, baby,” she said, before hugging her again. “I’m so sorry.”

“Octavia decided to bury his body,” Kane told her. “Just like he wanted, at the dropship.”

Clarke nodded, briskly, ready to tell them to go away so she could be what they needed (fuck, he could see it in her eyes) when Abby told him she needed to talk with her, and Kane left without a word.

“You need to come back.”

_“Mom.”_

“No, Clarke. You’re not okay.”

She laughed. It was a bitter, broken sound that made her mother wince. Somehow, it was worse than the endless silence he’d been witnessing for God knows how long. “What gave me away?”

Dr. Griffin took the bait. “You don’t seem like yourself, honey. I knew something was off the moment I saw you, but I thought you were still thinking about what happened at Mount Weather. You can’t stay here if you’re not well. I’m sure they’ll want you at your best to do this, we’ll just have to convince them. When I confirm you’re fine, you can come back, okay? You just—”

“Fine?” she repeated, incredulously. “Do you really think I’ll be fine after this, mom? Do you think I’ll recover?”

“You will,” Abby assured her.

But Clarke shook her head and answered with a brokenness that he didn’t want to hear ever again. “I won’t.”

“Clarke—”

“No, mom, you don’t understand. He was everything!” the words hit him like a physical blow, and her words were laced with pain. They were raw, making him take a step back. “You don’t get it. You let my father get killed for the greater good, but when I closed the dropship door, it killed me. I thought he was dead, and then he wasn’t and it didn’t matter that we were on the brink of war, I couldn’t be happier. Then I sent him into the mountain, and all I caused was pain for him and myself. And now he’s dead because of me! Because I left and even then, he couldn’t stop looking for me. I’ve lost him forever, and one of the last things he did was— fuck, mom, he smiled at me!”

“Clarke—”

“I wish I had never left,” she said, and she had never spoken with such conviction “If I hadn't, even if he hated me, he would've known I loved him,” she cried, covering her face with her hands. “He didn't know. He risked his life for me and I couldn't even tell him.”

“Oh, baby.”

As she crumbled, her mother took her in her arms and let her cry herself out. Bellamy watched from a corner, awestruck and crestfallen, heartbroken and desperate.

He was living in hell, and he didn’t know how to get out of there.

Abigail Griffin left Polis the same night, and he stood there, by Clarke's bedside until her tears had stopped and her eyes were empty again.

“You need to wake up, Clarke,” he whispered to her, hoping for her to hear him, somehow. “I need you. I won't live a life without you.”

She closed her eyes when his hand touched her cheek. Still, he didn't think it would be any different until she exhaled shakily. “Please go away, Bellamy. I can't handle seeing you and hearing you. It hurts too much.”

He inhaled sharply. “I'm real, Clarke. Please, listen—”

“What do you want me to say?” she cried, sitting up, hugging her legs to her chest. “That love is weakness? That I should go on with my life without you? I can't! That I'm sorry? I am. That I shouldn't have left? I know that, but—What do you want from me? Your voice is killing me, and seeing you—it doesn't help. It hurts. It’s too much.”

“I'm real, Clarke, and I am not going anywhere.”

She shook her head, and more tears fell. “No one else can see you. You're just in my head. Finn was here too when I killed him. But you? God, Bellamy. Seeing you is killing me inside. I'm trying to make you proud, but every time I see you, I just want to cry. Please go.”

“I’m not leaving until you do.”

She snorted, but it was watery. “Oh, so you’re just waiting around for me to die. Very comforting.”

He frowned. “I'm not dead, Clarke. We are the only thing real here. This is just a dream, okay? Please, remember. Roan didn't kill me, and he tried more than once. We need to get out of here before we get trapped forever. This is a nightmare, nothing else.”

“I don't think I can get out,” she whispered. “I don’t know how.”

“I'll help you, okay? We'll figure this out. Together, just like always.”

She looked at him, _really_ looked at him, and cupped his cheek. Her legs were outstretched on the bed. “Before that, I need to tell you something.”

He nodded, locked into her eyes.

She searched his face and then, slowly, closed the gap between them pressing her lips to his. He closed his eyes at the touch, but she didn't try to deepen it, just stayed there, breathing the same air as him, kissing him gently, until she pulled away to press her forehead against his.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“And _I_ love you,” Bellamy said back.

When he opened his eyes to see her, she wasn't there anymore, but at least the nightmare had faded away.

 

* * *

 

 

When he woke up next, he had to blink repeatedly to finally know where he was.

Bodies swayed in front of him, and for a second, he wondered if he was in the middle of a war, but then he noticed the colors. Usually, when he went to war, he was surrounded by blood, bodies, and explosions, but there were lights and laughter.

He was at a party.

He tried to talk to someone, and they went right through him, so he knew he was just there as a ghost and wouldn't be able to talk to Clarke... again. At least until she noticed him. Time was running out and he still couldn't make her believe him. He needed to, he refused to lose hope, lose his heart, his everything.

He saw himself, dancing with his sister in a corner, both of them smiling like they hadn't in years.

His eyes finally found her, smiling and going for a drink while he followed her without telling his feet where to carry him. However, the smile he had on his face vanished when he saw someone else getting close to her.

When he was finally at her side, he realized that Lexa was smiling, too. It was a different side of her he hadn't seen before, he saw a softness in her he didn't know she had. He wondered if the stoic commander he had met was really the girl in front of him, or if this was just how Clarke saw her, how she wanted to remember her.

He wondered how many happy endings with this woman Clarke had conjured in her head.

“How are you?” the brunette asked, taking a sip from her cup.

Clarke beamed at her, and his heart ached but he couldn’t help but smile at seeing her so happy. She tucked a strand of hair that escaped her braid behind her ear. “You have no idea how happy I am,” she said. “I hope you are, too. I'm glad you could make it.”

“What? Do you really think I would have missed the opportunity to see you getting married?”

He blinked in confusion. _Married?_

“Finn did.”

“Really?”

The blonde nodded, smiling wryly. “Only after he asked me to come with him and leave the groom behind.”

Lexa snorted. “Did he really think that would work?”

She shrugged. “That's Finn for you.”

And, well, it really did sound like something he would do in another world, even if Bellamy had barely known him.

“I'm glad you are happy, Clarke,” Lexa said, seriously. “You deserve it.”

Bellamy —the dream-Bellamy— appeared from behind the blonde and wrapped his arms around her, leaving a kiss on her temple. “Hey, princess.”

“Hi!” she greeted him, leaning into him and turning her head to give him a brief kiss on the lips. “How is your sister? Is she having fun?”

“Not as much as I am.”

Clarke's smile widened and her eyes softened. “Good.”

He buried his head in her neck and only then noticed they had company. It was so fucking weird, seeing himself from another perspective. Seeing himself holding the woman he loved in his arms was something else. “Hey, Lexa.”

“Hi. Your wife was telling me how Finn asked her to ditch you at your wedding.”

He snorted. “Yeah, huh. She's here with me, right? I think that's enough of an answer.”

“Congratulations, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, don't let me keep you. Go dance.”

When he stepped closer to them, the room blurred and he wondered why Clarke couldn’t be happy most of the time when she obviously deserved it.

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy felt the heat first. The atmosphere was thick, and the itch on his skin was bothering him.

When he opened his eyes, he was in the middle of the desert.

Clarke was lying in the sand, her face filled with burns and her hair longer than he had seen in years.

He knew where he was, and he didn’t want to be there, he wanted to get out.

When she woke up because of the raven, tears starting falling down his face. When she started screaming at the top of her lungs, he broke down with her, because— _why, why, why?_

She didn’t deserve it. No one did, but especially not her. All she had been doing since day one was make the hard choices, to protect everyone.

He screamed, his voice raw, full of the hurt he’d felt when he left her behind to die. He sobbed, for the first time in God knows how long. He hated himself so much for every decision he’d been forced to make, but now that he knew how hard it had been for her—

He would’ve taken her place without question. He would’ve taken the pain for her, every hurtful word, _every fucking thing_ just to ease her burden.

He would’ve bore it so she didn’t have to.

He hated the universe, the Earth, the Ark, _for everything_. They forced him to become something he loathed sometimes, something that he couldn‘t recognize in the mirror most of the time. He hated himself for a lot of things, but none felt as big as leaving one of the people he cared about the most to die. Leaving _the woman he loved_ behind, to die for him, for their people.

The world was already blurred by his tears and he didn’t realize that the memory had already left.

 

* * *

 

 

When he opened his eyes next, everything was dark. Panic raised in his chest as Hazel's words were repeating in a loop in his brain. ‘If you are in the darkness... _If_ all you can see is black, you're going to be trapped there, and there won’t be an exit.’

He hadn’t allowed himself to think that way, because he still had hope. He needed to hold on to it, or he will break at the thought of losing her again, but when all he could see was darkness, he thought that maybe it was too late already. And then, he heard her, the world came to focus once more and he realized they were in the woods, the same place she offered him forgiveness for the first time.

“You need to leave, Bellamy.”

He knew without asking that she was there... His Clarke.

“I'm not going to leave without you,” he said, and the words came out of his mouth easily. His voice was rougher than normal.

He felt movement, and then she intertwined their fingers, squeezing once as if to make sure he was really there. “I need you to,” she sighed when he squeezed her hand. “Please.”

“I can't,” he choked out. “If you die, I'm going with you. If you can't defeat this thing alone, I'm going to help you, and we'll fight.”

She took a deep breath, and he felt the weight of her head on his shoulder. “I love you, Bellamy. In case you didn't know.” He sucked in a breath, but she wasn’t finished. "You don't have to say anything at all. I know you broke up with Echo a few months ago, and I don't expect you to feel the same way, just— I guess I needed you to know. In case we die.”

“I love you, too.” He ducked his head so he could see her, and touched her jaw so she could see him, too. Their breaths mingled in the middle of the night and he knew this was his last chance. “You need to wake up, okay? This isn’t real, and you’ll— we’ll both die if you don’t wake up. This is like A.L.I.E.” He brushed her hair away from her face and rested his forehead against hers. “These are dreams, and they are memories, nightmares or what you want them to be. I know this isn’t easy, but I don’t think you want to stay here. You need to come back, okay? Madi needs you. _I need you.”_

“I need you, too,” she whispered, and then closed the gap between them to kiss him, slow and deep. When she pulled away, the look in her eyes was full of adoration.

That was the last thing he saw before everything went black.

 

* * *

 

 

Waking up wasn’t quite as dramatic as he thought it would be. He thought it would feel like coming back to life, but he didn’t jolt awake and start throwing things until he calmed down. Instead, he woke up slowly, taking a deep breath and was confused until something tugged at his hair, and it felt almost like…

That was the exact moment when he sat up on the cot, breathing heavily. “What happened?” he asked, voice hoarse and throat dry. Clarke was on the other side of him, with her eyes still closed. “Why isn’t she awake?” His eyes find Hazel and Raven immediately, but Abby is nowhere to be found. “You told me I wouldn’t wake up unless she did.”

The redhead shook her head and his heart stopped right there, because— _what the hell._ No, no, no, it couldn’t be—

But then she smiled, and he realized she was shaking her head in amazement, not in response. “She will. Her brain worked overtime and we induced her into a coma for a few days until she recovers. We thought neither of you would make it, more than once,” she admitted. “It took Miller, Echo and a few of your soldiers to keep Madi, Abby, and Octavia out of the room because they weren’t useful here when they were so involved with the both of you. The chip was connected to her nervous system, but she killed it and we have to get it out of her now that isn’t endangering her life.” She must’ve seen something in his eyes, because she hurriedly added, “It’s not risky, now that it’s turned off, but we need you to leave so we can extract it. And then you just need to wait for her to wake up.”

“She’s okay, then?”

“We need to run some tests when she’s conscious again, but we think she will be okay, yeah. But we really, really need you to go.”

He nodded, but when he put his feet on the ground, a wave of dizziness hit him and Raven was at his side in a second. Murphy entered the room, looked at them and said, “It was about damn time.”

He followed Raven, supporting half his weight on Murphy while they both walked towards their room where he rested for a while before taking a shower.

It helped, a little. It wasn’t like he was really dirty, but he definitely got rid of certain things with the water. The tension in his muscles left, and the headache disappeared. As he was heading out of the bathroom, he saw his reflection in the mirror and the blade in the sink.

He didn’t think twice about shaving his beard.

 

* * *

 

 

It took time for her to wake up, but when she did, he was at her side in an instant.

She clung to his forearms, breathing shakily, and he held her when she asked him to rest on the bed with her. At some point after the surgery, Murphy and Miller had brought a large bed into the room and she was in it, so it wasn’t uncomfortable at all.

“Is this...?” she trailed off, not knowing what to say.

“Real?” He finished for her. She nodded against his chest. “Yeah, it is.”

“You don’t have a beard,” she pointed out. He smiled a little into her hair. “Are you sure about that?”

“I shaved,” he confessed. “I didn’t seem like myself anymore.” He exhaled, feeling how Clarke curled up further into his chest. “Who do you want me to bring?”

“Just Madi, for now.”

“Okay,” he said, standing up.

“Bellamy?” she called, shy and soft. “Would you stay with me, even after you bring her?”

He smiled a little, and his eyes were soft when he replied, “Sure, yeah, I'll be here in a minute.”

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing Madi did when she entered the room, was launch herself at Clarke.

“Be careful, Madi,” he told her, trying not to wince. Madi was looking at Clarke as if she hadn’t seen her in years. “Are you okay?” he asked Clarke.

Clarke’s smile was weak but genuine. “Yeah, just tired.”

“I was worried,” Madi whispered. “I thought you weren’t going to wake up. I thought that neither of you would wake up.”

“I’m here, my little natblida. I’m okay.”

That’s when Madi started crying, holding onto Clarke while the sobs shook her body. He turned to leave them so they could talk, but Clarke held onto his wrist. When he looked at her, she mouthed ‘stay’, so he took her other side and embraced her without another word.

The moment Madi was asleep, she turned to him. “You went there for me?”

“Yeah.”

Just when he thought she would start yelling at him, she asked, “Was it true?”

“What?” He stopped tracing random lines on her arm, to hear her.

“What you said to me. Under that tree, and after Roan—” Her voice trailed off, and she sounded so uncertain he kissed her temple. He could see that his gesture gave her courage. “Was it true?”

“Yeah,” he whispered, because he didn’t see anything good in lying. “I love you.”

When he looked at her, she had tears in her eyes, but he could see her smile, and when she kissed him the rest of the world melted away.

“I love you, too,” she said, taking his hand and finally falling asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you to @BellarkeMood for being my beta-reader and being patient with me. I loved writing this, so I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Leave kudos and give me your thoughts about this in the comments, I would love to read them!


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